Cicily sat at her desk, looking over the different vials she had prepared. A small smile appeared on her golden features, before her eyes glanced out towards the window. It was still a long time before the next golden sylvan would be born from the tree, but she felt something tugging at her instincts.

This was not a new feeling, as she had been experiencing it for weeks already, and had investigated the sensation with the help of her power. “I suppose it’s time, then.”

One of her hands gently rested on the desk, and Cicily closed her eyes in focus. To prepare for her final duty, she used the inherent ability of her race to transmit all of the knowledge that she had acquired into the ancestor tree. She could feel her wisdom being shared among all of her sisters, stored within the collective dream.

Only when she was sure that she had finished did she stand, the scenery around her shifting. She had directly transported herself to the southernmost edge of the forest. “It would have been nice to say goodbye, first. Ah… Alice was already sent back to her own world, wasn’t she? No matter, then.”

Cicily brought her hands up to her chest, and opened her mouth to release a gentle tune. A melody that felt as if it echoed against the trees.

Jahar, the demon sent as the second leader of the Sorii Settlement, sat at his window overlooking the small city that had been erected surrounding the launch site. With the aid of the sylvans, the atmosphere of this world was almost breathable, and there was no shortage of edible plants and meat.

Thanks to them, the hundred year plan had been almost completed in a mere five. And by all estimates, the sylvan race was expected to continue growing at a steady pace for a long time to come. Their only known downside was their dependency on the tree from which they were born. From a strategic standpoint, this left them far too vulnerable. Merely a single large-scale attack would be enough to wipe out the future of their species.

As he was mourning that weakness, he heard something, a voice that penetrated the atmospheric shell of the settlement. No, not one voice… focusing his eyes past their normal limits, he could see the figures of the green, blue, and even red sylvans all stopping their normal activities.

Each of these being looked to the south, as if called by a strange power… and began to sing. Some of these sylvans were even located inside the settlement itself, their voices even more clearly heard. However, there were no words to their lyrics. Despite this, for some reason, Jahar felt… a sense of loss in their chorus.

The final duty of the golden sylvan was something that Cicily was well aware of. She had devised the appropriate ritual and disseminated it to her sisters to ensure its success. Now was the time, and she had sent the call.

Almost five hundred thousand voices echoed her call, answering her. Singing her song and channeling the power of nature to her location. From the north, waves of green light gathered together, forming a wide beam that descended on Cicily’s position.

My sisters, my friends, you have provided me with a wealth of knowledge and richness of life. Now, it is my turn. Sing for me, that I may find my final home. The green light seemed to ripple around Cicily, the condensed natural energy causing fluctuations in space that showed strange images.

Through some ripples, there was naught but darkness. Through some, unending fire. Others showed vast expanses of water or thriving cities. Cicily watched all of these scenes passing her by, until suddenly, her arm lashed out. One scene, a ripple just barely within her field of view, a red valley.

She caught this scene, and forced her own mastery of natural energy to its limits. There was a flash of green, and Cicily vanished from the pillar of light. With her presence gone, the song ended, and silence filled the air. For a brief moment, the sylvans went still, as if to both mourn their loss and thank her for her duty.

Elsewhere, Cicily emerged from a blinding flash of light. Scorching wind assaulted her skin. She didn’t know how far away she had sent herself, or even if she was still in the same realm. Her eyes scanned the horizon, and judged it to be far further than she was familiar with, yet the gravity felt the same.

Ultimately, though, her current location mattered little. She had no method of returning to Sorii, even if she had sent herself to a doomed world. This was something that she had come to understand.

The ancestor tree had given itself ten chances to continue its lineage. The green, blue, and red sylvans all existed for the purpose of feeding knowledge and power to the gold, who in turn existed to become a seed. Once a gold sylvan had grown sufficiently powerful, it would feel a calling to establish its own forest. If only one of the ten seeds managed to become a successful forest, the lineage could continue.

Knowing this, Cicily had chosen not to fight her instincts. Even though she had lived a short life, she had learned much. She had learned that the value of one life can never compare to the value of the future.

And so, once again, she sang. Standing beneath the twin suns of the desert, she gave her final song. Green and golden lights erupted from her body, taking root into the ground and soaring upwards. When her voice faded, she had truly become a new tree, standing fifty meters tall. In time, she would grow as high as the sky itself, casting a shadow on all who saw her. She would bear the fruits of a new generation, and become their mother.

But for now, all that was left for Cicily to do… was to dream.

“I feel a disturbance in the--”

“Don’t even say it, Terra.” I muttered, cutting her off and earning a wry grin from the catgirl. Udona had warned me that Cicily was about to do something big, though I didn’t quite expect that. “Where’d she go?”

“Let’s see?” Terra closed her eyes, before giggling playfully. “Oh, that’s just poetic. She’s gone home, Dale. Back to Spica’s realm.”

“Spica’s realm, but now Spica…” I muttered, confirming her words when I changed the map to that region, and ran a search for her. There was a brief moment when the image rapidly zoomed out, showing a starry landscape before zeroing in on a specific star. Or, as I noticed when I got closer, a binary cluster.

The planet that Cicily arrived on was a barren desert, with barely any water either above or below the surface. This was due to the fact that its twin suns had been constantly hammering at its atmosphere ever since I merged the laws of Spica and Lorek. One of the stars in this system produced mana, while the other produced ki.

Normally, the energy collisions would cause no real damage to a planet, as it would be entirely absorbed by the atmosphere. However, this planet already had a fairly thin atmosphere, so a portion of the energy was allowed to leak through, wreaking havoc on what little resources remained of the planet.

I couldn’t help but wince when I noticed the conditions that cicily had sent herself to. “Is there… really any hope of thriving there?” I asked, glancing over to Terra.

The catgirl goddess simply offered a small shrug. “If anyone can do it, it’d be a sylvan. I doubt that she’ll be able to terraform that world like they did Sorii, but there’s a chance that they’ll make a forest that the sylvans themselves can live in. On the bright side, monsters won’t start spawning there until one year after the first batch of sylvans are born. They’ll have some time to build up their knowledge and skills before having to fight.”

I gave a small nod when I heard that. If monsters began spawning at the same time as the first generation of sylvans were born from Cicily’s tree, it would be hard for them to fight. But if the ‘countdown’ didn’t start until the first sylvans were born, that would increase their chances for survival. So long as the tree itself was able to maintain itself for that long.

“Warp jump has been successfully completed.” A voice spoke out in the observation deck that Julia found herself sitting on, gazing out as the blue veil was lifted and the stars became visible.

“Another eight hours until it’s charged again, I guess.” she muttered to herself, raising her glass to peer at the stars through the red liquid in the cup. This was something that she had quickly become accustomed to.

The warp drive that Dana had designed was by no means perfect. On a single charge, it did not have the energy to travel all the way between two stars. Instead, after four hours of dedicated travel, depending on the size of the ship, it would need to stop and recharge for eight hours. Like this, two complete jumps were completed in every twenty-four hour period.

Julia’s shifts were centered around one of those ‘off’ periods. Halfway through the jump, she would switch out with the ‘expert’ that covered the other shift. Then she would sit around and wait for that jump to end, and the eight hours to pass for the charge before passing the baton back halfway through that jump.

As of yet, however, there had hardly been anything worth noting about their journey. Sure, there was the one time that they had accidentally jumped into an asteroid field, but that had only been a brief hiccup in their plans before they escaped it and corrected their path.

While Julia was watching the stars through her cup, she noticed something shifting. At first, she thought it to be a trick of the light, a shadow caused by the liquid. Until she saw it again.

For the first time during their voyage, Julia brought a hand to her ear, tapping the button to send a message to the bridge. “Run an optical scan off our starboard side. Adjust for infrared, but don’t run a manascan just yet.”

One thing that Julia had learned quite well in her time traveling through space in Vision Expanse. Many space-faring creatures didn’t possess normal ‘sight’. Typically, they possessed some form of extrasensory perception such as detecting mana or sending out ki waves. This was because it was too easy for the optic nerve to be damaged by directly subjecting it to a star’s rays.

More often than not, running a mana scan would cause these creatures to immediately become hostile, registering either new prey or a potential predator that had entered their territory. Either way, they fought viciously, causing Julia to quickly learn to first scan with more mundane means.

It took a few moments for the scan to complete, so Julia simply waited. However, soon enough, she had her response. “Miss Hart, would you please come to the bridge? Your presence is urgently requested.”

Julia’s eyes went wide when she heard that. She had expected that she might have actually seen something, and sent that suggestion on a whim. She never actually expected that, not only was she right, but they would actively request her help with something.

Slowly, the elf rose from her seat, setting her glass down as she made her way for the door. I swear that if this is a boss battle, I am so not prepared.

Making her way through the hallways, she passed the other passengers, all of whom clearly had no idea that anything was amiss. Some even greeted Julia as she passed, before returning to their own conversations. When she arrived at the bridge, she was greeted with the sight of the crew stiffly looking at the screen at the far end of the room.

Displayed on the screen were numerous large, wispy figures. They seemed to randomly fade in and out, giving them the appearance of ghosts. However, at the corner of that screen was a smaller red screen. Julia immediately identified this as the infrared scan she had suggested.

What appeared to be numerous scattered ghosts on the main screen was, in fact, simply one massive creature. Its body would fade in and out of the visible spectrum in random patches, giving the appearance of an army of smaller figures.

So. Not. Prepared.